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This training is for organisers, coordinators, facilitators, and activists, who want to build and deepen their skills for empowering active and critical citizenship. The course offers the opportunities to explore a range of theories, models, and practices that can be used to help individuals, communities and organisations find the inspiration, courage and understanding they need to take back control of their own lives.
It will bring people together from around Europe to explore how we can build vibrant, fierce, sustainable and creative social movements. The LABO team will share some of the tools, frameworks and practices that have been meaningful for them, as activists, organisers, and trainers – both from a professional and personal perspective. Expect reflection, sharing, action, (re-)connection, challenge and creativity!
The tools and approaches shared in this course will help organisers and activists support people to think more critically about their role in shaping society. They will enable you to bring communities together in inquiring and empowering dialogue with each other. They will give you more confidence to assist others to find the inspiration and courage to step up as active and critical citizens. These are crucial skills at a time when progressive values need to be defended and extended through vigorous engagement.
“The most radical thing any of us can do is to be fully present to what is happening in the world” – Joanna Macy, environmental activist, writer, scholar.
New technologies enable us to be more informed than ever about world events and personal tragedies. At the same time we can be conscious of our own complicity – the ways we benefit and participate in the systems causing inequality – and meaningful change can often seem unrealistic in divided, polarised and alienating society.
To this LABO say: “Don’t panic – organise!”
Political frameworks, such as anti-oppression work, enable us to critically analyse these systems and reflect on our own position within them. Participatory methodologies, such as theatre of the oppressed, offer us the opportunity to ‘rehearse’ or ‘practise’ for reality. Practices for connection (such as the Work that Reconnects), invite and empower us to stay open, aware and present to injustice and systemic crises surrounding us. This can empower us to take a stand against oppression and transform ourselves from passive onlookers to active change makers. In this training we will explore, experience and apply these approaches.
“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” – Audre Lorde, poet, librarian, civil rights activist.
Embodying our values and ideals is no easy task. As committed as we might be, we have grown up in a society that separates people in ‘us’ and ‘them’. During this training we will explore intersectionality as a framework to understand links between our identity and our position in society or groups. Together we will build a shared vocabulary to allow us to deconstruct the values we have been socialised in and build a new, inclusive group culture.
During this training you will:
Of course there will also be time to have fun, walk by the river, be creative, move your body, read, share poems, stories or songs or just be in silence.
Who is it for?
Activists, organisers, campaigners, trainers, educators, youth workers – and others working in the field of social change.
LABO vzw:
LABO vzw is a movement for critical citizenship*, based in Belgium. Our mission: to empower and sustain people to build vibrant, fierce, sparkly and inclusive social movements. As a volunteer-led organisation we have different working groups that each choose their own focuss. Together we form a type of ‘social laboratory’ where we can experiment with different approaches to social change.
(*) Disclaimer: When using the notions of citizenship and citizens, we do so acknowledging the limits and problems associated with the mainstream use of ‘citizenship’ as linked to a nation-state, based on borders and often excluding immigrants and marginalised groups. In our context, being ‘a citizen’ refers to being a political subject, with rights and possibilities to contribute to the communities and society one takes part in. We use ‘citizenship’ as a term to refer to people stepping out of passivity and taking stand, becoming ‘agents’, moving from being a spectator to becoming a spect-actor.
None of the team are native English speakers and are well aware of the challenges of working around topics mostly developed in an anglo-saxon context. They adapt these ideas and methodologies to their our own context and look forward to exploring together how to adapt it to your context!
In the solidarity economy:
(See details of our approach to radical economics here)
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Location:
LABO vzw is a non-profit educational organisation that strives as a movement towards a strong civil society that collectively work to create social change and a commitment to social justice. LABO vzw believes in the power of communities to facilitate radical transformation of the current model of society. A crucial condition is the sustainability and democratization of community associations that have come under pressure. LABO vzw advocates for the extension of a creative community of discerning global citizens who transform our society. The acronym LABO literally stands for “Learning, Acting, Movement and Organizing.”
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They, 46 years old, single parent, activist, bike mechanic, offset printer, psychologist, self-defense trainer for women. Unconditional love: Yohanes (13), Hermelijn (14) and Hazel (17). Loves playing football, cycling adventures on their own, kickboxing, colours, greasy and inky hands, creativity in all forms and actions, the vast landscape at the seaside. Mees worked in a publishing company as an offset-printer, in an environmental NGO on energy poverty, in an anti-poverty organisation as a coach on environmental justice, in an anti-militaristic movement as an organiser and as a coordinator in a movement for critical citizenship. Now focussing on training and coaching. “Strenghts: Intuition (and the courage to follow it), life experience (and the ability to translate it so others can take benefits of it as well), coaching, (parental) care, empathy, wondering about small things Confidence in group processes and ‘letting go’, loves unexpected twists in a training. Being the glue and the (bio-degradable) glitter. Prioritises the topics of sustaining resistance, healthy groups and movements,‘battlegroundsurgery’. Challenges: ‘over-caring’, dealing with intensity, mornings.”
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They, Activist, traveler, idealist, Aries (fire starter). Loves: chocolate, making lists, kickboxing, writing, seemingly random encounters, dancing, trees, transformation, ritual, meditation, alpacas, purple, body-work and direct action. Trying to find a way to “reconcile their ‘hippie-side’ with my ‘anarchist-side’.” Has been active in a range of environmental and social justice issues, including a campaign against coal bed methane, squatting, forest occupation, and feminism. As a passionate traveller they had the privilege of observing or participating in different social movements and communities around the world. “Strengths: emergent design, enthusiasm, intuition, embodied work, energisers, ritual, confrontation, being critical, holding the group container. Challenges: theory, patience (especially towards themselves), speaking slowly, full group discussions, letting go.”
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Elka is a member of the LABO vwz trainer pool. She has worked “mostly with groups of young adolescents from different backgrounds in different places on earth”. She values the well-being of the people working in the organisations, which she sees as compromised by overly quantitive mindsets. in her work she looks for balance between action and self-care. She sees her strengths as: “Keeping an eye on the well-being of the individuals in a group. Give space for all kinds of emotions. Listen without judgement. Ask questions, including about myself.” She recognises the challenges to: “Be more aware of my non-verbal communication. Take space for my own emotions/processing. Not to over-question.”
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Linzy Na Nakorn is a movement director, politicised somatics practitioner, community organiser and facilitator. For the past decade she has been facilitating movement, body work and creating theatre, dance and participatory performance that advocates for and organises with communities in pursuit of housing, disability and racial justice. Her movement practice focuses on trauma-informed approaches to building resilience, capacity and joy via way of the body for personal, interpersonal and community sustainability. Linzy was a Co-Director of The Big Ride for Palestine in partnership with The Gaza Sunbirds, Native Woman Ride and Middle East Children’s Alliance; using cycling as a tool for mobilising active solidarity and in support of campaigning for the rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people. Linzy is part of a UK network of activists and artists advocating for Radical Care – supporting organisations, researchers and institutions to work towards system change in societal approaches to labour, leadership and access.
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Jeroen (he/him pronouns) has been involved in grassroots social movements for more than two decades now, starting back when he was fifteen. Throughout the years the fights for “climate justice” and “migrant justice” have been consistently on top of the list of struggles that make his heart beat faster. A key transformative moment for Jeroen was reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s revolutionary pedagogy gave him a language to support the creation of emancipatory learning environments, rooted in a desire for collective liberation. Jeroen has also been exploring in depth Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects among other methodologies to build his trainer’s toolkit. Inspired by the liberatory possibilities of these traditions, he started an organization with a friend, LABO vzw, based in Belgium, where he has worked as a trainer and campaigner between 2013 and 2023.
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Ella brings more than 10 years’ external experience working with not for profit and community based organisations across diverse themes including: advocacy for migrant communities; local community engagement in national policy making; and structural relationships between poverty and disenfranchisement, and education and poverty. Immersed in critical theory in her early 20s she brings a holistic and questioning approach, and is passionate about systemic solutions that centre relationship and interconnection between ecology and society. A long standing member of the collective, Ella has been part of the core team since the inception of the Ulex Project. Her work bridges facilitation, developing project partnerships, governance, strategy, operations, and project and programme evaluation. She has developed and overseen more than 70 partnerships with a range of different actors across European social movements.
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Alex has been facilitating courses geared towards social and personal transformation for the past 6 years. They have spent the last 10 years as a core member of the collective running the Ulex Project and has a deep experience of the integral approach we have developed. Their area of training expertise is sustainable activism and skills for developing ‘deeper resources’ for action. Their commitment to social justice and history of political activism have involved them in direct action and affinity group work focused on climate justice, anti-capitalism, queer politics and gender identity. A strong focus on the somatic dimension and embodied practice (informed by their work as a dance artist and yoga teacher) underpins both their approach.
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Nina (they/she) is a participatory artist, community organiser and political theatre maker. Theatre of the Oppressed has been a core part of their practice since they trained in India with Jana Sankriti in 2018. They are an artistic director of queer led theatre company, You Should see the Other Guy, who work on and off stage to tackle social injustice and make raucous musical verbatim plays. Nina has designed and delivered multiple TO training programmes in activist, community and academic settings, often combining TO with song making to collaboratively explore themes around power and identity. Their current fascination is thinking about TO as a practical manifestation of queer theory and asking: Is Theatre of the Oppressed queer?
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Marianne is a Holistic Security Trainer and Coach, part of the Holistic Protection Collective. She accompanies activists, human rights defenders and journalists globally. Being an activist herself, she is also a trainer for direct action and civil disobedience, and having a background as a mediator, she trains other activists how to facilitate dealing with conflicts in grassroots groups and diverse teams.
Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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new stories: different worlds
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Knowledge, skills and perspectives to challenge oppression and create spaces of solidarity.
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Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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Navigating the complex terrain of migrant and migrant-solidarity organising
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an introduction to a holistic and transformative approach to activist training and facilitation
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Go to the people, learn from them. Live with them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have – Lao Tzu
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Building facilitation capacity through participatory practices.
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a space to think critically, to ask challenging and transformative questions, and find deeper inspiration and understanding to empower social change.
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building and strengthening regenerative praxis for BIPOC organisers.
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Ulex: Latin (argelaga Catalan, gorse English) noun:
1. A thorny-evergreen flowering shrub, with a high capacity for regeneration and resilience. Its seedpods open in contact with fire and it reshoots from charred stumps. A successionary plant that grows well under challenging conditions. It improves soil fertility through nitrogen fixing, preparing the way for renewed biodiversity.
2. A traditional choice for igniting fires. Burns hot and bright.
3. A networked project adding nutrition and fertility to European social movements through training and capacity building. It kindles the realisation of social justice, ecological intelligence, and cognitive vitality.
